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Chamath Palihapitiya declares that when it comes to Bitcoin ‘nobody can stop it’

Palihapitiya has the knack for picking success stories early, and was early in getting heavily invested in both Facebook, the ubiquitous social network, and bitcoin, the disruptive cryptocurrency that has sharply divided investors who continue to argue over its legitimacy. In this cnbc.com article, they report that Palihapitiya said “Nobody can stop it because nobody can control it,” at the Delivering Alpha conference on Sept. 12. “The idea that the government can put curbs on this is actually pretty specious.”

He continued, “As far as I’m concerned, the genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “Now the real question is how can we productively use it to solve some of society’s issues around the financial services infrastructure.” arguing that the time is to see what can be done in the ‘moving forward’ of Bitcoin and block chain technology and how this can be used in enhancing society.

My thoughts: This sentiment from people in power, and traditional investors, progressive as Palihapitiya may be; in looking at cryptocurrency and bitcoin in general as a technology that has kicked the gate open and run off with rider, now needing to be corralled back into general society is an interesting one. For me, the entire thing sounds a lot like topics discussed at economic forum Davos 2016 – in which central bankers postulated the idea that while they disagreed with the premise of Cryptocurrency for many reasons, they felt that the technology demonstrated concepts that they would absolutely love to implemented, such as a global identity. Why not make some money on the way there I suppose?